In another thread, trobin asks what people would use a computer for, if they were blind, and it occurs to me that we are 'blind'
to each other's use of computers

Are we 'on top of it'?
Do we control computers, or will they end up controlling us?

So what do you use your PC for, that's maybe unusual?
Maybe the Hardware itself is unusual, not x86?
Maybe you have built an unusual project to control your house?
Tell us about it
Maybe you have yours in a cluster & do multi layer DNA sampling?
explain it
Maybe a central server in a huge business? [well some may do!]
Maybe someone built a milgram machine - ooh, evil
http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm
Maybe you have a mobile rig?
post some pictures

Me, I have a real ragtag bunch of old PCs from 486s to P3s, haven't got as far as a P4 yet, and my 'fast machine' is 866Mhz

I've got a P3 smoothwall box, a P2 IPCOP box, a printserver box, a hardware experiment box, with no side panels, & with easy slide in hard drive trays & scsi hardware that gets different hard drives put in for all sorts of different uses, mainly testing/trying different combinations, including firewire external CDR & Laptop Hard drive in a firewire case
A 'regular' twinboot puppy214R/win2k surfing box, on a 100meg network to a 12 port switch to other projects,[including a mac g3] and for friends, to share puppy or other linux tinkerings, hardware mods, music downloads, & broadband
I've played with rs232 port control stuff, [ though got bored with it, as it wasn't like radio control] making my own 20mA current loop opto-isolated switching stuff & dedicated high current charger, with a dedicated 'basic program' battery charger monitor for charging/recovering forklift batteries for a solar/wind project, using a 486
I have several laptops,mainly old IBM, some in pieces
Future projects are trixbox, an asterisk type phone system, a low power mobile vehicle HTPC with touchscreen, if I can get it to work, cheaply, and a server, maybe dual processor, with large cache/ram, possibly an old HP/compaq or Sun, though I'm not sure if I need a dedicated fixed IP address for this [any answers would be useful] so that I can share files/blog/ and anything else that comes to mind, including even, to see if I can make some extra cash somehow
I'd also like to be involved with providing old PCs to disadvantaged kids, either at home or abroad, with/without puppy, but I fancy with, as I'm really frustrated by the number of old PCs thrown in landfill, still

You get the picture.... nothing clever, maybe not that unusual
Nothing I can control the world with, or hopefully, get controlled by

Well there's a lot of "Vanilla" computer use that I do but I am also an IT student and I do networking in the ANG. I have been using different computers to study for my Security + exam. I know that I can just study the book but I like being able to put my little network together and actually test hardening my OS and network (BTW the Black Ops puppy idea is really cool). I hope this helps with the CISSP test later on as well. I also am a HTPC guy but both of these are really not that far outside the norm IMO. I also salvage old PC's (with puppy's help ). Good topic but I guess for the most part I'm a boring user. I wish someone working on the human genome project was a Puppy Linux user and would come in and wow us. Good topic

I have to say, the fact that there are so few unusual things that are done with Puppy should be taken as a compliment. The fact that the users are everyday people who use the computer for everyday things should speak volumes to the quality of this OS. I am personally proud to be a member, doing all I can to help other users with problems, converting as many people as I can to using Puppy, and even so far as my Puppy tat. I do it because I believe in it. I say, the more vanilla users we have, the better. There will always be us nerds out there trying to fix the bugs, all because we believe in it.

That being said, I really don't do anything UNUSUAL with Puppy. I am very interested in the Black Ops Puppy and have made a frugal install with heavy encryption and a 18 character password. I'm going to send it to a few friends of mine and see if they can crack it. That's as far as I've gotten as far as off the beaten path of normal usage.

I did have an idea of a daisy-chained supercomputer, made of old MMX technology (I have a lot of P1's sitting around) amd powered by puppy. But I gave up on that idea when my wife made me move all of them back out of the dining room. Now it's just my p4, p2, and 486. They all have Puppy in some form on them. And they will until they or I don't function anymore.

This IS a good topic, at least to me. My wife asked a few times, "honey why don't you read books on the Windows instead of sitting by computers reading all those Linux related stuff?"

She also asked if there is ANY way to make some money out of Linux and put some groceries on the table.

I said "YES, but I don't know how" I became a guy thinking about making money out of used computers and Linux.

So this post is very interesting to me.

I would like to hear what others do with their comps.

I stripped out(not a girl or girls, unfortunately) my old PII and provided instant solid housing for my kittens furnitured with fresh towels for comfort. The kittens got too big for the steel housing and the "house" became a poo place for them after just adding some sand. Now my friend took them to country side and they live there happily ever after catching mice.

What did I do with the poo full of the steel box? Don't guess too hard.

To the dump box outside of my home.

I only got the contents of the PII. They are now judged by its contents not the color of skin, I mean the steel case.

I thought about turning that into a game machine but you can buy 8bit console less than 2bucks in China. A media center? Cannot play recent video formats due to lack of resources(RAM, CPU an hard drive).

Born in Korean and sitting in the balcony of an apartment in somewhere in the people's repuloic of China. Doing...... NOTHING.

Any idea, folks? Don't tell me throw it away. Every dog has its own day.

Do what I did. Grab an old laptop screen, some extra wire and wire cutters, and a wiring diagram for your car and install it there. Boom! in car entertainment and with a USB port and 3G connection, you could have fairly decent internet service wherever you go. It provides a lot of help on those long trips and if we get lost.

I used an odd system to do it actually. I used a modulator from an add on LCD screen for Xboxes and PSX's. I just wired the laptop screen into the RGB on the modulator, then ran a RCA Video cable to a ATI video out card installed into the board under the seat. If I remember correctly it involved also wiring in 12v power to both the modulater and the laptop screens, in addition to some 5v voltage reducers. and a fair amount of fuses.

I am in the process of moving to another state, so unfortunately the plans were packed up a few weeks ago. As soon as I can run across them I will let you know. I just remember that the hardest part was that the wires were so small and my arthritic hands were not happy. I would look up your laptop model and get the wiring diagram for that specific model. If you wanted to skip the modulator idea, here is a VGA pinout diagram that may help you along the way.

And I would try the TV idea again, some xorg configuring and a TV out card and that would be way easy. Even if it was a coaxil connect, a RCA-Coaxil modulator is only 8 bucks. That would probably be the easiest way to go, IMHO.

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